Bert Danher

BERT DANHER, The Daily Telegraph crossword compiler who has died aged 75, liked to introduce himself to strangers as "the man who is Thursday" because his puzzles appeared on Thursdays.

He was the 10-member compiling department's greatest inventor of anagrams and began by using Scrabble tiles to devise such clues as "'World Cup team" for the answer "Talcum powder". A classical music lover, Danher also liked to signal his authorship in cryptic puzzles by beginning 1 Across with a musical clue.

He particularly enjoyed linking two clues together so that the solutions created a homophone; thus the clues "fairy-like" and "ghost" made "elfin" and "spectre", or "botanical gardens" and "beast" made "Kew" and "brute".

No matter how clever his clues and solutions, he was always careful to ensure that when cruciverablists were confronted with an answer they would say "Ahh", rather than "I would never have got that".

The son of a plumber, Albert Edward Danher was born in Liverpool on April 24 1926 and educated at King Edward VI School in Birmingham and Liverpool Collegiate before becoming a clerk with the Liverpool Cotton Commission at 15.

He trained as RAF aircrew in the Second World War, but did not see active service and became a trainee manager at Whiston colliery, near St Helen's. But being 6 ft 4 in tall, he found stooping to reach coal faces too painful and switched to farm work.

For eight years, Danher was an insurance inspector with Guardian Royal Exchange at Beaumaris on Anglesey, where he taught himself Welsh. But after his first marriage broke up he became a peripatetic music teacher in Merseyside.

He claimed that the proudest period of his musical life was when he played the French horn under Sir Charles Groves at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. He was also pleased to have run an amateur orchestra which gave Simon Rattle one of his first conducting jobs at the age of 16.

His fascination with crosswords was fostered by his uncle Jim McCartney, the father of the Beatle Paul, who also worked at the Cotton Commission. This led Danher to start devising clues and in 1974 he launched himself as a professional compiler by sending two puzzles to the Guardian.

He was soon working every day of the week for Fleet Street. His puzzles in The Daily Telegraph and the Times were unsigned, but he was known as Dinmutz in the Financial Times, Aquila in the Independent and Hendra in the Guardian.

Danher also wrote questions for the television quiz show University Challenge and once went on a cruise to the Mediterranean during which he compiled clues about the ports visited, for a prize puzzle which was published at the end.

Knowing that the Queen is said to devote half an hour to the Telegraph crossword, he was delighted to be asked to produce a special puzzle for another fan, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, on her 100th birthday; this consisted of clues about her lifetime, and was blown up to 5 ft by 5 ft and carried by two children in the parade down the Horse Guards.

Paul McCartney therefore had some reason for referring to his "famous cousin", though Danher, while appreciative of McCartney's skill, was no lover of pop music.